between nothing and forever
by Lady September
Summary: During Stefan's absence, Elena gets to know him better. stefan/elena.


**notes: **I'm not entirely sure this makes sense to anyone but me—actually, I'm not even sure this makes sense to me, but it feels finished, so I figured I'll post it before I go to bed. I might take it down tomorrow morning when I realize how bad it actually is. You can find me at lady-september[.]tumblr[.]com.

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**between nothing and forever  
><strong>_Lady September_

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"You won't be sad forever, Elena," he tells her.

He has a smile that makes her stomach fill with butterflies but when she turns around to look at him now, he's so very serious. He meets her eyes sincerely, makes sure that she knows he means it. She supposes he knows—he's lost his parents, too. Somehow that makes it feel more real, more tangible than the many citizens of Mystic Falls that has offered her their condolences (_so sorry Elena your parents were good people here have a pie that will help with the loss_), because he _knows_.

She looks at him and for the first time in a long time, because she felt broken even before the accident, she feels something resembling hope building in the pit of her stomach. There's a future for her and it might even be with this boy.

So she takes a deep breath, nods, smiles.

Wonders if he can see the hope in her eyes.

—

They're mock fighting over what movie to watch on a rainy Saturday night in the video store. He doesn't seem very interested in watching a movie at all, but she insists. It's been a while since anyone's invited her over for movie night. She used to go all the time.

"I am not watching that," Stefan complains, shakes his head at whatever romantic comedy she's shoving in his face.

Truthfully, she's not paying much attention to the movies, either—just grabs whatever looks cheesy so she gets the pleasure of watching his face when it twists into a grimace. "Come on," she insists, nods to make her point. "This looks _really _good."

"No."

"Pretty please?"

"No way."

"Not even for me?"

"_Elena_—"

His voice is exasperated, so she turns away, puts the movie back onto the shelf. "Fine," she huffs. "You pick one."

Her stomach flutters when he catches her arm and reels her back in before she can make her escape behind another shelf, growls against her mouth. She giggles, shakes her head and feigns trying to push him away. Instead her hands find his shoulders and she's actually full on laughing when she catches sight of his face again.

"You're impossible," he grumbles, but there's a smile in his eyes.

"You should have figured it out by now," she says before she can catch herself, the words tumbling out of her mouth by their own accord. "I always get what I want."

And then she realizes what she's said, goes still. It's meant as a joke, she supposes—she always does this: twists truths into jokes because she needs to say it out loud, even if people think she's asserting her position at school or bragging or even if they don't pay attention to it at all, _whatever_. There's something sick inside her that likes to see it take shape, the irony that comes with it. Because she's not proud, she's not. She hates that about herself, the lengths she'll sometimes go without meaning to. It's always been a sore point.

Problem is that this is Stefan.

This is Stefan and somehow he always knows, always understands without any need for her to explain. He still lets her, when she wants to, but whenever things veer off into uncomfortable places he just seems to know exactly what she means.

Now he's sighing against her hair. "Elena," he murmurs, and she can feel lips against her forehead and then he's kissing her and she kind of forgets what they're even doing here to begin with. When he breaks away he meets her eyes steadily. "You're not a bad person," he tells her, thumb soft against her cheek.

"You don't know that," she murmurs, fingers twisting in the hem of his shirt. "We haven't known each other all that long. What if I'm secretly a serial killer?"

His laugh catches in his throat and for a second, there's something in his eyes that makes her frown. She can almost see it, she thinks, that same thing she's feeling. She can never quite place it, not even in herself, but then she blinks and it's gone and he's her Stefan again, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at her flat attempt at a joke.

"Yeah, right," he says, and he's already reaching for some other movie. "I bet you can't even watch horror without squirming."

"Hey! I'm a lot tougher than I look," she protests.

"Yes," he agrees. "I'm sure you are."

—

Stefan is gone.

Elena can't afford to break. She doesn't get the privilege of breaking, not anymore. And if that means she has to mold herself into something she's not to survive, into someone more like Katherine, then she'll gladly do it because so many people are relying on her now and she _can't let them down._

It doesn't matter if it's smothering her, doesn't matter if it feels like she has the world on her shoulders. She's the doppelganger, she's responsible, and it's on her to fix it.

But fixing things is difficult when you're a seventeen year old—almost eighteen (_I'm almost eighteen Damon for fuck's sake_)—girl. There are obstacles, things she can't do on her own. Alaric moves in, takes to sleeping on the couch. It's strange, how no one in Mystic Falls even questions the fact that there's a semi-alcoholic history teacher sleeping on her couch, but she can't help but be grateful that no one seems bothered. She needs him, in the absence of Jenna and _Stefan_.

There's a gaping hole inside of her that needs to find reason in chaos, needs to find something to latch onto. Last time she felt like this he came to town, so now, she sets out to find the truth.

She has to know, she has to find him—she has to _fix this_. She pours over his journals, studies them, tries to find patterns. Damon doesn't want to help. Alaric doesn't want to help. Sheriff Forbes doesn't want her involved.

So Elena does what she can.

During Stefan's absence, Elena gets to know him better.

—

He's tied up in a chair, head hanging low, and Lexi's words are still ringing in her ears. Hell, his _screams _are still ringing in her ears.

It's only the second day he's tied up—well, he's been dry a couple of years to believe ghost Lexi, but that doesn't count according to human Elena—but he looks horrible already. There's an itch in her fingers, like she wants to reach out and touch him, or maybe take the chains away. She's not completely sure he won't hurt her, no matter what Klaus has compelled him to do. That's the sober thought that keeps her from following through. The frustration is still dancing in her fingers (_you were so far away for so long and now you're here but not really_) and she drums them against her leg.

"What do you _want_, Elena?" he finally drawls, looks up at her like he's a predator and she's the prey. He's never looked at her that way before, before Klaus.

She shrugs.

She's not entirely sure. Maybe she's here to instill some kind of hope in him, whatever she can muster because she doesn't exactly have much of it herself. Maybe she just wants to see him. Damon doesn't want her to, wants her to let him handle it—she'll let him have tomorrow. Today is hers.

"I don't think you've ever been completely honest with me," she says.

He huffs a laugh. "Of course not," he says, but there's no warmth in his voice. "What?—you expected me to tell you all the little stories from my past? Yeah, that would've gone over so well, Elena. We'd be on the couch, watching some movie, and I'd go, hey, see that girl, she looks like someone I _tore apart with my own hands. _Elena, would you have wanted that?"

She doesn't listen to him, doesn't pay attention to his words. She won't break, not even for him. _She doesn't get the privilege to break. _"But I've kept things from you, too," she continues as if he hasn't said a word, "so I'm not innocent either."

She probably can't compare them, but she does anyway. Maybe it'll make her feel more like a monster and him more human, so that they'll finally land on the same wavelength.

"I don't want that anymore," she tells him, leans her head against the wall of the cell tiredly.

"And you always get what you want, don't you, Elena?"

It's meant to hurt but she feeds off it instead, finds strength in it. She crosses her arms, narrows her eyes at him. "And don't you forget it."

—

Everyone—not Damon, though, never Damon—keeps telling her it's not Stefan: _it's not Stefan calling you names; it's not Stefan draining the blood of innocent people; it's not Stefan covering for Klaus; it's not Stefan, not really, hold on to that Elena, don't go mad Elena._

Thing is, it _is _Stefan. It's another part of him, one that he's kept hidden from her because he's ashamed of it, ashamed of what he's done and what he's capable of.

He's never been completely honest with her, but it's not really his fault. She's never _not _known he has things in his past he doesn't want her to know. Those first uneasy months he spared her from it. When she was crumbling under the weight of new knowledge, of a brand new world, when understanding Damon's reasons seemed like a daunting task, it was easy not to ask. She didn't _want _to know more about the things he's done because she didn't want to lose her center, not when madness drew to her like moths to flame.

When he fed from her that night in the forest and the aftermath was more horrible than she could've imagined, she started to understand. They've talked and talked and talked about it—some nights they'd talk until the sun came back up again and when they ran out of things to say and there's a pause between them, he looked away and told her another story. They're horrible, the stuff of nightmares: she's still sure he edited them a bit from her, knows there are things you can't ever admit out loud without losing your mind.

But he's honest, and she's glad.

That weekend at the lake house, too, he told her more and she started to get a grasp at things. She didn't run, and that's something, she thinks.

There are things she will never understand, _can't _understand because she's still so very human inside and she doesn't get the cravings or the monster right under the surface, never calm and ever hungry. But she _does _know that Stefan's lived a very long life. If you have forever, there's a lot of time for you to make mistakes.

What _he _doesn't understand—refuses to understand because he's still a martyr, no matter what he says—is that she can forgive him. Honestly, if she can forgive Damon she can forgive anyone, even if Stefan's sins are horrible.

If you have forever, she thinks, there's a lot of time to atone.

—

Rebekah is a whole other problem, separate from her brothers, that Elena doesn't like to think too much about. The blonde seems to be everything she's not and makes it perfectly clear from the start that Stefan used to love her.

That brings up a different set of issues that makes Elena feel almost normal—things like, _have they been together in the present? _or _what if she's really his type?_

Of course, those questions lead to things that are not very normal—things like, _well, he was with Katherine and she looks exactly like me so but if I think about it she's more like Rebekah than me overall so—_

She'll give herself a headache figuring it out.

But Rebekah is here, and she's honest.

"You know," she says calmly from her place on Stefan's bed, one of his journals in her hands, "he really was magnificent in the 20's. He took to our kind of fun so easily. We used to tear people apart and fuck in their blood." Her smile widens, as if she thinks she hit a nerve. "He'd always get a kick out of that."

Elena blinks, takes a breath. "Maybe so," she acknowledges, inclines her head. "But I made him want to be a better person. What did you ever do?"

—

She still has one of his journals.

He doesn't ask for it back, doesn't take it when she's away from the house even if she always leaves it on her desk. It's a little risky given the amount of vampires that has access to her house and considering it's her only anchor to him right now, but she figures it's his. If he wants it back she'll let him take it. Maybe it'll do him some good, in this post-compelled craze he's in.

Some nights, when Damon doesn't stop by to keep her company,—and she knows how that sounds, damnit, _when did she become this girl?_—she curls up in her bed and reads it. She's already read it more times than she can count but she keeps finding new things: he scribbles his t's differently when he's angry; he always uses a certain set of words to describe his brother; he never gives away anything that's really a secret.

One night, she rereads a sentence that she's never paid attention to before. She doesn't know why but this time it catches her eye, makes her straighten slightly in her bed and read it again.

_Damon laughed when he saw me._

There's nothing more. It's a throwaway sentence in a paragraph about Chicago and Lexi and nameless (_the names are always saved for the wall_) dead girls. She traces the words over and over again with her eyes.

She doesn't pay any attention to time when she calls the other brother—the one who's not hers.

—

"Do you see now, Elena?" he says with a bitter laugh on his lips and she can't tell if he's cranky because she woke him up in the middle of the night to talk about Stefan or because she wants to talk about _Stefan _with him _again_, Stefan who he loves and hates even when he shouldn't. "Do you understand? Have you found what you've been searching for all this time?"

So he hasn't been blind to her attempts at understanding.

She bites the insides of her cheeks, eyes distant. _Stefan. Damon. Stefan—Damon—Stefan._

_Oh, Damon_, she thinks. _You're more alike than you think._

"Yes," she finally says carefully, folds her hands in her lap and meets his eyes. "Yes, I understand now."

—

Elena is not stupid.

Regardless of what the others think of her, she's not. She knows the facts. Klaus is still a threat. The Originals aren't friends, not really, they're ancient monsters. There are things concerning her relationship with Damon that she doesn't even allow herself time to think about. The Stefan she remembers is gone and he's probably not coming back to her any time soon. Her friends might think she's overlooking all of this, but she's not.

Because she also knows she loves him, and she makes the people she loves her priority.

—

"What are you doing here, Elena?"

There's no real bite to his voice. He sounds tired. He leans over his desk like he has the world on his shoulders, hunched under the weight of it.

"You told me," she points out quietly with a shrug of her shoulders, "that you would always be here for me. That I could come to you about anything."

His lips twitch. "That was a long time ago," he says.

She shakes her head, lets out a tired laugh. "You're a vampire. That's nothing to you." She sees something on his face, then, some glimmer of emotion—the same as that night she told him she kissed his brother. So she levels with him, shakes her head. "No. No, not nothing. Something in between."

She sits down on the edge of the bed—she's spent so many nights here the room is practically as familiar as her own bedroom—and he allows her. There's shattered glass in the corner of the room, she notices, but she doesn't say anything about it.

"It's impossible," she says, echoing Jenna's words.

She thinks of her aunt now, when the pain has started to settle in that empty part of her that she reserves for all the people who have died because of her. Bright, shining Jenna. She remembers late night conversations and smiles and promises of a better future. She remembers empty eyes and fire, so much fire, and she knows without a doubt that sending Jeremy away is the smartest thing she has ever done.

"It really is all for family," she muses out loud.

He doesn't answer her, seems to know she's talking to herself more than to him. It reminds her of the way he used to know which way her direction of thoughts went without her ever having to explain it and she closes her eyes briefly, takes comfort in this. He bends over his desk again, his head ducking low, and after a while she can hear his hands move over pages. The movements are soft and she can see what his words will look like in front of her. She doesn't think she'll ever read them.

They sit quiet for a very long time, the only sound coming from his pen.

She studies him closely, tries to map out the differences and similarities completely—tries to memorize them, so that she can take the memory out later when she is alone and compare and contrast.

When it is dark outside and her phone starts to ring, she gathers her things. She doesn't answer, shuts it off instead. Whoever's calling will have to wait. He stands up when she does, but he doesn't say a thing. She doesn't spare him another look, simply turns her back and walks towards the door.

"Why come here, Elena?"

He blurts the words out right when she's about to leave, when she's already in the doorway, like he can't let her go without knowing the answer to that simple question. She turns slowly, catches his eyes. He looks so very much like a lost boy, and she feels tired, incredibly tired for an eighteen year old.

"Because I knew you'd understand," she answers honestly.

Something shifts in the air between them.

"You're right," he says, his voice a little steadier and his back a little straighter. "I do understand."

She nods, smiles—and it doesn't feel forced.

"You won't be sad forever, Stefan," she says and sees hope light in his eyes.

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**end note: **Yeah, so. I don't know. I figured I'd post it before the next episode ruins it (because let's face it, it probably will). Do leave your thoughts behind in a little review for me, please?


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